*Thanks to the The Art of Teaching Blog for sharing this great download. We colored the picture, and then they glued orzo on for the eggs, spiral/corkscrew pasta for the caterpillar, shell pasta for the chrysalis, and a bowtie pasta for the butterfly. So sweet. The kids thought the orzo were real caterpillar eggs!

We split the boxes of pasta as a grade level, but I think next year I will buy a box of each on my own and dump the extras in a small box. This could be a great sensory tub, and the kids could pick out the 4 stages and draw a leaf for the egg to lay on, another leaf for the caterpillar to munch, a tree branch for the chrysalis to hang from, and then paint the butterfly.

The Butterfly Site has great photos, like the one to the left. It also has short video clips of each stage. Nice resource! You could print the photographs for a sequencing activity.

*We usually get the butterfly eggs (caterpillar eggs? which came first? ha!) and watch the life cycle later in the school year when it's warm enough to release. I think this year I am going to try to get some good pictures of each stage so there is a better connection, and use those pictures for sequencing.

*This is a cute life cycle of a butterfly video on YouTube that is narrarated from the butterfly's perspective.

*For large motor/transitions, we ball up into an egg, lie flat to be caterpillars, stand up and slowly spin ourselves into a chrysalis, wrapping our arms around ourselves, and the fly back to our seats as butterflies!

*Butterfly template I have used this template in the past, drawn a dotted line down the middle, had the children paint one side, folded it on top of itself, and used it to show symmetry of the butterfly. Since this really doesn't have anything to do with life cycles, I opted not to go for this activity this time. You could also have the students draw their own butterfly (although you might not have symmetry, I found my kiddos couldn't cut it folded and still have an eye for what half a butterfly would look like! :)

*This might be a good time to incorporate this idea from Under the Alphabet tree into your word work stations, except make the printable a caterpillar instead of a snake, or just have the words written and tell them the slinkys are caterpillars to stretch out words.

*Check your Scholastic book orders for great books! I just did a quick search, and couldn't find the set I got years ago, but my students love them. I think the set I got had about 5 books of different animal life cycles. Great pics and the kids could pick out some of the words!

I've got my eye on this kit from Lakeshore on life cycles. It's $29.95, so I might keep my eye out for Dollar Store toys that will work, and crafty ideas to make these. But they would be great in a center!

This Life Cycle Theme Box from Lakeshore has photo cards, puzzles, stamps, and similar animals to those shown above, as well as some plant life cycle resources. It's $49.95, so again, another nice to have, but not sure I can take that chunk out of my budget. If you have a larger budget, this would be a nice resource!

If you do a lot with bird life cycles,. I love, love, love this cute art activity! I can totally see this on a page with a little shredded paper bird nest and some fingerprint eggs!